Vehicle spoken dialog systems (or “speech systems”) perform, among other things, speech recognition based on speech uttered by occupants of a vehicle. The speech utterances typically include commands that communicate with or control one or more features of the vehicle as well as other systems (e.g., embedded navigation systems) that are accessible by the vehicle. In general, speech system generates spoken commands in response to the speech utterances, and in some instances, the spoken commands are generated in response to the speech system needing further information in order to perform the speech recognition.
A navigation system database will generally include both phonetic data (e.g., the spoken names of points of interest) and text data. However, the phonetic data in some cases can be quite limited, and may require the user to provide a speech utterance that is an exact, word-for-word match with an item (or a small number of items) stored in the navigation system database. That is, for example, the navigation system database might include phonetic data for a point-of-interest corresponding to “Phil's Bar and Grill.” In such a case, the system might not be able to find that result when the user speaks the abbreviated phrase “Phil's”, even if the latter is the most common way that people refer to that point of interest.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide improved methods and systems for searching for points-of-interest and other such data in a vehicular navigation system. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.